Hello Dazzle! Thanks for coming and hanging out with me today, I’m glad that you are here. Today I want to talk about Imposter Syndrome and some of the ways that you can manage the symptoms to achieve success in your life while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Imposter Syndrome is the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.
-Oxford Dictionary
The first thing to understand about Imposter Syndrome is that this is a Cognitive Distortion. This is important to understand because addressing Imposter Syndrome requires a person to address the distortion. When a person has a Cognitive Distortion, it means that they have chronic thought patterns that lead them to inaccurately interpret events, the behavior of others, and their own personal dispositions in a negative way.
Something to understand about Cognitive Distortions is that they are really common. In fact, they are something that every single one of deals with. There are many kinds of Cognitive Distortions. [1] This means that it is part of the human experience to have them. In fact, Imposter Syndrome is one of the most common with 82% of people having this experience. [2] So, the first thing here is to give yourself some grace. Know that you are not the only person struggling with these feelings. Me too. Most of us are.
Focus on the Facts
Imposter Syndrome is a little imp sitting on our shoulder telling us lies. The single most important thing that we can do to lessen it’s effect in our lives is to ensure that we are properly parsing out facts and opinions. Facts are things that are concrete and provable. Opinions are views or judgments formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. It is always essential that we ask ourselves if something is a fact or an opinion; whether it is coming from another person or our own mind.
If something is an opinion, it shouldn’t be given a large amount of weight in the manner that you proceed. After all, for every opinion there is someone who holds an opposing opinion. This means if your mind presents you with “I don’t deserve this job” it is important to know that it is an opinion and that it is likely that there are people who hold the opposing opinion that you do deserve the job.
However, things like: I have a BSN and I have 20 years of nursing experience are facts. Regardless of the things that the Imposter Syndrome imp tells me, these are qualifications that I do in fact have. Using these facts should carry more value when moving forward then an opinion.
Here are some statements that can never be a fact, they are always an opinion:
- “You are an imposter.”
- “You didn’t work hard enough.”
- “Someone else would be better for the job.”
Validate Your Feelings
Regardless of what the facts are telling us, we can have feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. No matter what you are feeling when you are considering a job or going into work for the day, make sure that you give those feelings time and space to exist. Allow yourself to feel what ever you are feeling. But also remind yourself that your feelings do no shape or change reality. Being anxious about being late doesn’t mean that you are in fact going to be late. It just means that you are having anxiety.
Validate your feelings, but don’t allow them to dictate your reality.
Cataloging Your Inner Rules
Cognitive Distortions include assumptions and rules that we hold dearly or have decided we must live by. Sometimes these rules or assumptions help us to stick to our values or our moral code, but often they can limit and frustrate us. Thus it is important to examine those assumptions and rules. This requires careful self consideration of not only what we do and feel but also why we are doing it.
When we know what assumptions and rules we are living by we become empowered to rewrite them. Great idea, right? But what does that look like in practice? I am very aware of the fact that I cannot know everything that there is to know in the world of nursing knowledge. Because of that I assumed that I didn’t know enough to be a good nurse. Knowing that this assumption was the driving force behind most of my performance anxiety, I was able to address it. This is done by constantly reminding myself that the amazing nurses that I admire also do not know everything. It is also done by reminding myself of the principles of expertise which in no way expect a person to know everything in a field. Lastly, I remind myself of the factual evidence of my expertise: my BSN, my RN licensure, my 20 years of experience and my 2 nursing certifications.
Challenging and Reframing
When our brains present us a thought like “It was only luck that I got this job” or “I am lucky to have this job” we can choose to accept the thought or to challenge and reframe that thought. Reframing that thought could look like this “I feel lucky to have this job.” When we attribute our success to luck, we are ignoring all the things that we did in order to achieve that success. But when we reframe this to a feeling, we are no longer attributing our success to luck. We are now just stating how we feel.
It’s highly doubtful that you did NOTHING to get that job. You can challenge this thought with the question: “Was it luck?” Luck is success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions. But you applied for that job. That’s an action that you took that led to you getting that job. Then you went to an interview and performed there well enough that they chose you above all the other candidates. Again that is something that you did rather then something that happened to you. There were likely educational or experience requirements for that job that you met. Those are things that you did. Jobs are not given to people by chance, they must take actions to get them. Thus, getting a job is not about luck but about action you took.
Putting Thoughts on Trial
If you are really struggling with particular thoughts you can put them on trial. This is an exercise that can help you really look at and consider a thought. Write out the thought on the top of the paper. Then in one column put the “Defense” or all the evidence for the thought being true or valid. Then in the other column put the “Prosecution” or all the evidence for the thought being untrue or invalid. Then play judge. After considering all the evidence, does the thought still seem to be true?
It can be helpful to ask someone you trust to help you with this exercise. Getting an outside perspective on the thought can often help clarify whether that thought is an opinion or a fact. It can also help to know that others do not view us in the same fashion that we view ourselves. This means that whatever the Imposter Syndrome imp is telling us, it is likely that those around us have varied and different opinions then the one being expressed by the imp. That’s just the nature of human divergence.
Personal SWOT Analysis
When considering a new job or paths for career growth a Personal SWOT Analysis can be helpful. However, explaining how that works is rather complex and there is already a great guide that you can check out over here. The basic idea is that you are comparing your personal Strengths against your personal Weaknesses. The goal is to better use your strengths while getting better in the areas that you are weaker at. It also looks at Opportunities compared to the Threats. This is about evaluating the advantages and disadvantages to any particular field or advancement choice. This exercise can help you stay focused on the facts of a given situation.
The biggest challenge with the Imposter Syndrome imp is that there are times in our lives that we are not yet qualified or there is a lot of risk to taking a particular position. There are times in life that we should turn down opportunities that are offered to us. This tool can help parse out when it is really a time to pass on something versus when it is just the Imposter Syndrome imp being a jerk.
Give Yourself Praise
Whenever you have accomplished something, no matter how small, be sure to take a moment to praise yourself for that accomplishment. The praise that we give ourselves will carry far more weight in our lives then the praise given by any other person. Even if your emotions are telling you that this accomplishment isn’t worthy of praise, be sure to give it to yourself. Do it in writing or verbally. When we manifest a thing outside of our mind we believe it to be more real.
Well, that’s about it for my rambling today. Thanks for coming and spending some time with me. If you like my rambling then click on that like button. It really does help! Until we talk again, you take care of yourselves!
Zebra Pig 
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